The ANC destroyed black businesses

Professor William Gumede said the ANC was hostile towards black businesses as they were seen as sellouts, which were connected to the apartheid government.

This formed part of his discussion with The Truth Report about black economic empowerment (BEE) and its impact on South Africa.

Gumede is an associate professor at the University of Witwatersrand’s School of Governance.

He is also the founder and executive chairperson of Democracy Works Foundation and the founder of the Institute for Social Dialogue.

He served as the independent chairperson of the negotiations to establish a multiparty coalition of opposition parties for the 2024 elections.

Gumede is one of South Africa’s foremost political and economic experts, having won numerous awards in both South Africa and internationally.

Gumede has been following and researching black economic empowerment since its early days in the nineties, making him an expert in the field.

In his discussion, he stated that BEE would have been far more successful if it had been aimed at empowering black businesspeople.

However, he argues that the government opted to empower and enrich politicians and politically connected individuals instead.

This should not come as a surprise, as the ANC subscribed to Marxist doctrines, which were inherently anti-business and favoured political control over the economy.

He said that by the 1970s and 1980s, the ANC’s ideological direction was heavily influenced by the South African Communist Party (SACP).

This means that successful black entrepreneurs were viewed as sellouts or collaborators with the apartheid government.

During protests in the eighties, black-owned businesses in townships were frequently targeted and destroyed.

They became targets during the protests because they were perceived as being outside the ideological fold of the liberation movement.

“They looked at successful black businesses and entrepreneurs as anti-ANC because at that time, the party’s ideology was very anti-business,” Gumede said.

This is why, when BEE started gaining traction in the mid-1990s, he said that the ANC opted to empower its own politicians instead of businesspeople.

It also aligned with the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) goals, which are rooted in Marxist-Leninist theory and the ideology of the South African Communist Party (SACP).

The NDR’s goals include the state controlling every aspect of society. “They ANC wanted its own leaders to control business,” he said.

Gumede argues that BEE was flawed from the start because it prioritised empowering politicians rather than businesspeople with skin in the game.